The company aimed to leverage the fresh funds for creating and publishing AAA games in India, with a starting focus on mobile gaming followed by expanding to other platforms. LightFury Games, the dream mix of three friends—Karan Shroff, Anurag Banerjee, and Tina Balachandran—who founded it in January 2024, is determined to change the face of gaming by producing nothing but the best AAA adventure games. This step is in line with the growing gaming industry in India, as it has registered more than 500 million users.
The recently incorporated game firm, LightFury Games, which is backed by Karan Shroff, Unacademy’s former CMO and co-founder, has just secured an $8.5 million (INR 71.1 crore) seed round led by Blume Ventures.
In that round, MIXI and Gemba Capital also took part, along with a list of investors: Kunal Shah (the founder of Cred) and Gaurav Munjal (the CEO of Unacademy).
With the infusion of new capital, the company plans to make AAA games in India and will first launch their gaming on mobile devices and later consoles.
AAA games usually entail massive costs for rendering high-resolution graphics and are frequently published by reputable game-developing companies or studios. They have various creative modes of play, tons of content, and unique promotion strategies.
AAA games come on a range of platforms, including PCs, the console family consisting of PlayStation and Xbox, and sometimes mobile devices. Illustrations include Red Dead Redemption, The Last of Us, Uncharted, and God of War. While no AAA games are yet dominant in India, India has suddenly produced a couple of well-known AAA games recently.
LightFury Games, based in January of this year by Shroff and his colleagues, Anurag Banerjee and Tina Balachandran, is a product of their common mission of the gaming culture evolution through the development of top-quality AAA games.
The organization aims to be at the forefront of the technology sector and to provide a fun, interactive experience, with the mobile games segment of the market being the prime emphasis.
Shroff stated, “The gaming sector in India is growing rapidly, and now is a perfect opportunity for us to apply our experience to the industry. We want to use the funds to focus on building high-quality, cutting-edge AAA titles in India, establishing game studios in both India and the UK, and hiring top-tier talent in the country to help place India on the global map.”
Shroff went on to say, “Creating successful AAA titles in the Indian market and establishing a Tencent-like presence originating from India, is what we are excited to bring to the fore.”
Karthik Reddy, cofounder and managing partner at Blume Ventures, stated, “We’ve known Shroff and his enthusiasm for work from his Unacademy days; we identified a drive in him to translate this to a AAA game studio, thought through from an Indian viewpoint. The ability to assemble the talent and attract supporters from the gaming and consumer worlds makes it one of the most interesting investments we’ve made in this market.”
India’s gaming industry is rapidly expanding, with unicorns such as Dream11, Games24X7, and MPL sprouting in recent years. However, the country has yet to generate its own AAA game, revealing a market vacuum.
